Just Another Tequilla Sunrise, Isle of Love (Flickr)
It’s no secret that the Lab is working on a “next generation” virtual world(s) platform. Since the original announcement and follow-up confirmation, the matter has inevitably led to some controversy. Since that time the Lab has sought to give reassurance to users that doing so is not the “end” of Second Life.
Hence why the Lab are continuing to develop Second Life and continuing to plan for its future, up to and including a planning meeting which took place at the Battery Street offices during February 2015. Hence why the Lab continues to circulate manpower and expertise between Second Life and the development of their new platform, so that both might equally benefit.
Indeed, after recently advertising a software engineering position specifically for Second Life work, Oz Linden, the Lab’s Technical Director for the platform, was able to Tweet:
In this, it’s also worth pointing out that Oz has very much been the cheerleader when it comes to SL’s prospective future. In 2014, when the Lab was starting a process of aligning its resources to support both Second Life and its new platform, he actively campaigned for the post of Technical Director for Second Life. In July of that year he was happy to go on record saying:
I went through kind-of a process with Linden Lab management to try to get the new position I’m in now. This is something I wanted. I wanted this. This was not some kind of booby prize that was handed me. I got a couple of IMs from residents, I’m sure they were mostly kidding and mostly all in fun, but saying, “Oh, poor Oz. He got left behind.”
Poor Oz did not get left behind. Lucky Oz got exactly the job he was looking for.
He also takes a very positive attitude to the debate over the new platform and how it might or might not impact Second Life, noting that for the Lab as a whole, that such a debate is going on within the community demonstrates that they still have a very passionate and supportive user base for the platform:
People wouldn’t bother to criticise us for what they see as our flaws, and we can all either agree or disagree with whether or not individual issues are a big deal, and that’s a conversation I’m looking forward to. But they wouldn’t be bothering to criticise us if they didn’t think Second Life was worth having and worth improving.
This was again demonstrated during the February 13th TPV Developer meeting, when the subject of the new platform was raised in passing, Oz again emphasised that the future of Second life is far from over. In doing so, he also demonstrates the kind of pragmatic attitude towards the new platform we should perhaps all consider adopting. He’s further given me permission to reproduce his comments here in both audio recordings and as written transcriptions.
The folks that are working on the new platform would love to be able to say that they’re making something so amazing and so wonderful, and so much better that everybody will want to move over to it. And maybe that will happen; and if it does, then Second Life will be this vast, empty place, and there’ll be no activity happening here, and if we turn it off, nobody will notice.
I don’t expect that will happen, and realistically, none of them expect that will happen right out of the box, anyway. Because there’s an awful lot in Second life that will take time to to create equivalence for in whatever they end-up decided to call the new thing. So it’ll be time.
But if Second life continues to be a sound working environment for people, and they’re still enjoying it, and they’re still using it and it’s still economically advantageous to keep it alive – why would we turn it off? I mean, we won’t. It’s silly. And I think that’s going to be years and years. [That’s] just my personal opinion.
And in the meantime, my job is to continue to make it better. Not “keep it alive”; not, “keep it limping along” – to make it better.
And in terms of future activities related to Second Life, he went on to say:
It’s no secret we had a big planning conference in San Francisco last week; it wasn’t meant to be a secret, we did. We got everybody involved in Second Life get together; we had developers, and QA people and support people, and operations people and product planning people and business people….
And everybody got together and talked about what was working, what wasn’t working, various ideas for how to improve things, and it was fantastic. It was really fun; everybody there learned something they didn’t know when they got there, and we came away with a lot of great ideas. And we’re going to go ahead with some of those ideas. So, we’re having fun!
So really, there’s no reason to fear for the future of Second Life at this point in time. It’s liable to be around for a good while yet. Hence why I use another quote from Oz as the title for this article, one which I’ll paraphrase in closing. The Lab aren’t building a new platform instead of working on Second Life, the Lab are building a new platform in addition to working on Second Life.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Indeed… that’s a big ‘if’.
Because if it’s not, it’s going to be shut down quicker than we can blink an eye 🙂
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That’s always been the case, regardless of whether or not the Lab is building another platform.
That’s why I’ve always maintained to you (and others) in comments here. WE, the users of SL have a large say in how long SL remains viable, and that depends on how attractive we find other offerings as / if / when they come along, be they from the Lab or elsewhere. If we opt to stick with SL, then other worlds aren’t a problem. If we decide something else is bigger, brighter and better, and the majority of us decide to move and take our business elsewhere, leaving SL largely empty – then we have determined its fate. Not LL, the users.
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What they need to focus on is making Second Life more affordable. I have ventured out into open sims and found stable worthwhile grids for a fraction of the price. But until more creators are attracted to open sims? I have to deal with the wallet rape rates LL demands. Their rates are far out of touch with reality and the actual value of their services.
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Comparing pricing of OpenSim grids to SL is akin to comparing apples with pumpkins. No single OpenSim operator has anywhere near the overheads faced by the Lab, a company with 200+ staff, offices in three locations and the complexities of running a service that’s over a decade old and having to supporting tens of thousands of users, their inventories, their communications, etc., on 24/7 basis. It’s a whole other scale of operation that simply cannot be paid for by offering regions at $60.00 a throw, much less any lower.
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Linden Labs possible bloated staffing is not the issue. The issue is that there are grids just as technically state of the art that have real world rates and value. When CD players first came out they cost a fortune and Walkman stereos before that. technology always becomes more affordable and reasonable in time. IF Linden Labs can not be competitive? Guess what? SL will go the way of Betamax, 8 Track, and the like.
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No, none of the other grids approach the technical sophistication of Second Life. What they don’t have is scale – none of them have a database of over 20 million registered users or can support over 50,000 people online simultaneously. Getting to that level will require them to step up to another level of technology.
Another difference? All the other grids are piggybacking off Second Life viewer development. There was been a little bit of work by others to make viewers work better with OpenSim grids, but it’s still true that LL is doing 90% of the total development work on the viewer. The OpenSim grids also mostly aren’t funding server development; that’s being done by OpenSim enthusiasts on their own time. Yes, I know that the larger grids have made some contributions, but they’re not funding all the server work like LL is.
So why is SL so expensive by comparison? That’s part of the reason. There is also the fact that it is a cash cow that is being milked to fund the development of the next generation platform, but that’s the way that software and online service companies work.
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Second Life is obscenely over priced and not real world. Period.
Additionally it was within the life time of several people reading this post that everyone had black and white tvs with only a few channels of entertainment. Virtual reality and the growth of alternative grids may be some what similar to what has happened to improvements and options all seen within a life time in regards to video and television. History is full of examples of services and technology that claimed all kinds of reasons for their ridiculous costs. They are gone now.
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“Second Life is obscenely over priced and not real world. Period.”
Incorrect. SL is priced as it needs to be priced in order for the Lab to survive as a business and provide the level of service it provides to its hundreds of thousands of users on a 24/7 basis. What’s more, until wider issues impinged on the amount of disposable income the majority of us had to play with, it was also a price we were willing – if grudingly – willing to pay.
Shirley is absolutely right in her observations of scalability. and costs. You can compare SL to TV all you like, but you miss the point. SL isn’t about the hardware. Sure, it needs the server on which to run – but said servers don’t come delivered with all the simulator software and its underpinning dependencies all nice and neatly installed and ready to run, error-free.
It requires a lot of time and effort (and money) to provide and maintain all the various software elements that make-up Second Life. The elements that allow tens of thousands of users to log-in every hours of every day, and see the world, move around in it, access millions of items of data to manipulate their many and varied inventory items, to be able to change outfits, add and remove attachments, communicate with one another individually and within groups. It requires a team of full-time developers to develop and enhance the viewer.
It is also something that gets more and more complicated as time goes on, requiring greater degrees of time and effort. The more that capabilities are added to SL, the more there is a risk of breaking something or gaining an unexpected result.
I’m not talking content breakage here, although that is a concern for the Lab because of the huge outcry it can create – and which is also something that also hamstrings SL. I’m talking about implement capability “Y” which inadvertently breaks capability “X”. Because, again, SL’s development isn’t like hardware development. The Lab don’t develop “Y” and throw away “X”, they develop “Y” on top of “X”, which has in turn been developed on top of “W”, which in turn has grown out of “U” and “V”, which each use elements of “L” and “M” and “Q”, and “T”, and so-on and so-forth, creating an ever-evolving mass of interdependencies which are both complex and costly to maintain, but which must be maintained in order for you and I to continue to enjoy what we do on a daily basis.
The Achilles heel for SL is that in order to meet these costs it has unfortunately depended on a monolithic revenue model. As I said in a previous comment, no argument from me on that score. But any idea that the Lab can simply drop costs and get rid of staff and continue to provide the same server and capabilities and enhancements within the product is, I’m afraid, sadly misguided.
Hence why, in fact, they are developing a new service alongside SL. Because doing so, and building it on the means to generate revenue on a broader base and at lower cost to the individual user, is actually safer for the company’s survival (and by definition, our ability to continue to enjoy SL in the interim years) than trying to mess with SL’s revenue model.
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The Lab’s staffing levels are what they are in order for the company to achieve what it achieves. Historically, that’s meant growing from a handful of staff to an average of between 150-200. That’s not “bloated” – that’s what it is because it’s what it has been required.
“Bloated” might have been a term used for the massive expansion that occurred under Mark Kingdon’s tenure, most of which (from the outside) appear to be directed into areas not directly connected to the development and running of SL or the developed of the (subsequently shelved) SLE product. However, that was largely reversed in the mid-2010 lay-offs which pretty much brought the staff levels back down to where they needed to be: around the 170 mark.
“IF Linden Labs can not be competitive? Guess what? SL will go the way of Betamax, 8 Track, and the like.”
This much is true, and no disagreement from me there. Which is why, again, the Lab is working on a new platform, because SL is vulnerable to the risk of genuine competition arising simply because this revenue generation is locked-in to what is largely a single source. Ergo, if they are going to break the cycle and face-off against possible rivals that offer the kind of attractive low-cost and capabilities that will cause the majority of SL users to wholeheartedly away from SL, they are going to need a product which can conceivably compete with those emerging products. Because of its largely monolithic revenue model, SL can’t easily be pivoted to meet such a threat without doing a lot of damage in the process, which essentially circles back to my original comment: tier is what it is, because that is what is needed for the company to remain viable.
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It’s over priced. Period. I don’t agree that a new platform makes LL competitive. It’s just more rational to gouge the public with unfair prices. I have no doubt that Linden Lab will go the way of Zenith Televisions.
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I didn’t say a new platform makes LL competitive. I said it provides them with the opportunity to do what they can’t with SL – broaden their revenue generation base and reduce cost to the individual user.
If you can actually demonstrate how LL can lower costs associated with SL and maintain the levels of development and maintenance that are required to continue to present the platform as a usable service to you, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear your ideas and cost projections.
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Round and round we go.
They are not not running at less than an obscene profit.
Open Sim grids prove this to be fact.
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“Profit” yes. That’s why they’re in business. “Obscene”, hardly.
You can point to OpenSim as much as you like. Sadly, all it demonstrates is your failure to grasp the huge differences involved. As I’ve already stated, any comparison between OpenSim and SL is akin to comparing an apple with a pumpkin.
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Absolutely no reason they should charge 300.00 a region. It is obsecene. Tell me how do you type while you have all those Linden c*cks on you mouth at the same time. ROFL.
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Yes, insults really are the way to convince others that you actually have an inkling of what you’re talking about.
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oops typo… Oh well.
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If the Lab’s staffing is so up to date, why are there more and more breakdowns, failures and “Delayed Maintenance” on the Grid? If it takes a TICKET to get a sim restarted because for some reason it wandered offline, there is something decidedly wrong here.
Fine: Let SL be the cash cow; but keep that cow well fed and maintained. I can watch the “Grid Reports” and see the words “Unplanned Maintenance” becoming a standard lead-line for the Grid Condition Report. What happened to the weekly Rolling Restarts that used to be a fact of life we could depend on and plan around? Why can a sim be down for four hours before anyone notices (due to a ticket filed?).
Fine: Develop your next platform, but if you want this one to support that development, keep maintenance running….and not a running joke.
(Yeah, I was the one who finally turned in the ticket after nothing happened to a disfunctional sim outside an airport for a few hours)
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Issues are being dealt with, that’s precisely why we have (generally speaking) the weekly rolling restarts, so that fixes and updates can be deployed. The only reason we haven’t seen them routinely over the last few weeks is that in part tht the Lab is working on the next set of updates and also due to the fact they’ve been taking a pause in things while they plan and consider what’s next for the platform in terms of development, enhancements, and so on – that’s why there was a planning meeting, as referred to in Oz linden’s comments in this piece.
One of the issues with SL is that it is so complicated (a lot of it being down to being a free-form platform where users can create almost anything they like, with little direct control / limits placed upon it), that trying to keep running everything as smoothly as we’d like is akin to fighting brush fires. You put one out over here, and another springs up over there. Something not always helped by the fact that it trying to put out the first fire, you inadvertently start the other fire yourself (that is to say, in solving one issue, it’s often possible to inadvertently introduce a problem elsewhere within SL).
Raising a ticket on mainland restarts is required, because there are multiple dependencies involved which are somewhat different to private regions (where the region owner can initiate a restart whenever they wish, although it may not always solve problems and thus require a ticket for further investigation).
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It will be a while before Second Life gets replaced. Given the nature of software development, it will likely be three years or so before they can create something that can take its place. Then it will take a while for the new residents to create the environment. I expect ongoing development by Linden Lab until the new platform is ready for beta testers; sometimes after that Second Life will go into maintenance mode, but the lights will stay on for a while longer.
The day will come when Second Life is no longer a viable business. That day is not yet. On the other hand, I’d be wary of starting a new content creation business; between the difficulties of competing with the entrenched competition and the upcoming (though not imminent) end of the platform, it is not the most propitious time to enter.
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If you focus on mesh items, textures, etc. then the content you create should be portable to other virtual world platforms as well (such as OpenSim and High Fidelity). That will enable you to monetize your content in more than one venue and should protect you from the eventual replacement of SL by something else (however long that will take).
You can already profit from selling to such alternative virtual-world platforms by listing your items in Kitely Market – a marketplace that delivers to all Hypergrid-enabled OpenSim grids, some closed ones, and has announced that it will deliver to High Fidelity based “grids” once that platform is mature enough to accept deliveries.
There are some merchants making more money in Kitely Market than they do in Second Life Marketplace so if you fear having to deal with entrenched competition in SLM then creating your brand outside of SL may be advantageous.
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If Linden Labs either allows SL Residents to take their possessions with thiem or offers a credit for what is left behind, I can see the new platform being a success. If, however, SL Residents are simply told, “You start at zero and have to completely rebuild, abandoning everything you’ve either made or acquired in Second Life, this new platform is likely to be deserted for Open Sim experience. Open Sim is cheaper and if one has to literally rebuild from zero, Open Sim is a much less expensive way to do it.
Consider it a loss-leader and allow SL residents to transfer or get equivalent value for what they have now when this “New Platform” debuts. Otherwise, negative discussion will cost this new platform many of its potential new Residents. Doing otherwise could turn Linden Lab’s new platform into the electronic platform equivalent of “New Coke” (for those of us who remember THAT debacle).
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“If Linden Labs either allows SL Residents to take their possessions with thiem”
This if fraught with problems. Firstly, there is the very obvious issue that SL over the years has massed a broad range of content such that trying to make the new platform fully compatible with all of it really defeats the object of the exercise in developing a new platform.
More particularly, giving carte blanche to users (were it even possible) to move their content from SL to the new platform runs the risk of further upset over content and content creator’s IP. Not every content creator, for example, may want to see their content ported to the new platform, they’d rather have the choice over where and when it is used. Hence why many have EULAs included with the items you purchase from them.
Sure, the ToS technically gives LL to move the content if they so wish, but really, there should be a carefully thought-out balance as to how things are handled. One which allows a degree of content movement where such is possible, but which also respects the wishes of content creators concerned. If not, then a lot of bad feeling could quickly accumulate.
Of course, if content creators want to move their goods across to the new platform, and / or want to encourage custom through the new platform among existing users, then moving compatible content within your inventory you have purchased from them shouldn’t be so much of an issue,; or perhaps they might opt themselves to offer equivalent value / goods. but that is their choice to make.
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Bingo.
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You’re trying to talk sense to a Linden Lab Fascist. Run away!
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Yes, being confronted with facts is terribly inconvenient when you simply want to rant without foundation ;-).
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Linden Lab is building a product for which there is no demand. Such products are high risk adventures because if you do not get it exactly right all your efforts are flushed down the drain fast. This brings me to “Linden Lab” and “Exactly Right” and that is not a good match as everybody and their mother and even the doggies at the offices in Battery Street know.
I myself do not care to start over in a new world and I am sure many will agree. The tourists and kiddies who do not spend a cent except 2 Dollars for a skin and a dress might go for the new shiny. The actual residents interested in virtual worlds “Who had more than a decade now to settle into a virtual world” will remain where they are.
I meet new residents in world and these people like Second Life and enjoy Second Life so I do not see the need for a new world.
So many new places are being made using state of the art engines, places with perfect apartments and furniture using Unreal Engine 4 with fantastic graphics. So many MMOs offering player housing there is massive market saturation already.
Yes a new virtual world platform for the benefit to be able to slave day in day out behind a computer screen for a small RL income that is exactly what the world is waiting for.
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There is no demand?
Maybe I am the only person in the world then that can’t wait for the new SL and look forward to bringing my successful roleplaying community there.
And even though it isn’t really about money, quite a few people in SL make quite a nice income out of SL.
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From my personal experience, Jo, virtual worlds are still something that’s niche – to say the least. Most of the public out there doesn’t see why they’d want to exploit the capabilities of a virtual world. To tell the truth, there are factors outside LL’s control that play a role in this. I’m not going to talk about the UI and the learning curve; I’ve already explained in the past that not even the most feature-rich TPV out there can compare to the complexity of a feature-packed word processor – besides, this is something LL and TPV developers can determine.
The prevalence of laptops, net-tops, tablets etc., has put the best levels of visual quality and richness a virtual world can provide well out of many people’s reach. To truly enjoy SL or any other virtual world, you need a machine with a decent processor and a decent graphics card. But these machines are often dismissed as “gaming rigs”, and not only because of their cost, but also because of the stigma the “identity” called “gamer” carries.
Then, there’s the stigma of virtual worlds: Some dismiss them as mere games. Others dismiss them as pastimes for people with pathetic lives. I won’t talk about the people who bash SL for its sexual aspect, because I’ve already done so on my blog, and their arguments are disingenuous and hypocritical anyway.
I’ll stay on the technical side of things: Virtual worlds (especially when accessed through services like SL Go) eat up bandwidth like Igano Kabamaru gobbled up noodles and Pac-man swallowed pills. Without true net neutrality, and without proper broadband in many places, virtual worlds are hamstrung.
To this, one needs also add the cost of either renting a region from LL or any OpenSim grid, or hosting and maintaining their own.
And then, we need to see the issue of use-case scenarios. Can the VR ecosystem present compelling arguments and convincing use-case scenarios? I really don’t think virtual worlds were marketed that well so far, and Philip Rosedale’s dismissive attitude at SVVR could never be seen as a helpful stance.
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It makes no sense to keep SL ‘alive’. Firstly if I’m a new customer, which platform will I join? Secondly, if I’m an existing customer, which platform should I concentrate on? Thirdly if I’m a content creator, which platform shall I produce for?
As soon as we open the SL client when the new world is up and running, there will be ‘visit shiny new’ or words to that effect plastered all over our log-in screens. That’s the advantage LL have over previous competitors, they have the customer base to communicate with. Slowly people will migrate to the vastly improved incarnation of SL, and the old legacy world will be phased out. Why else would the lab hint at L$ balance and name migration? They want us to go there, but they’re hardly going to say or imply that the old one will be phased out. Residents can be quite sensitive to change, and telling them that their world will stop one day would have a tremendously negative effect on existing revenue streams that are obviously needed to fund the new platform.
It will also be the ecosystem of bloggers, tweeters and style pundits that fuel the migration, just as these channels are presently utilized to market second life. There’s a balancing act going on at the moment.
I don’t mean the above in any negative way, I just feel it’s a more realistic view of the future. If the new world is going to emulate and improve upon the existing platform which has done amazingly well for almost 12 years, then why would the likes of me stay in SL1? Reduce tier, reduce tier has been a mantra of paying customers since I joined SL in 2007, and allegedly ‘SL2′ will provide this and more. So why would anyone else not be attracted to new, faster, bigger and better? Why would the lab’ wish to present that choice to future customers, who, like me could potentially become consumers of going on a decade?
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It makes sense to keep SL alive if there is sufficient interest in it such that it continues to generate profit-making revenues, despite the arrival and growth of the new platform. That’s always been the Lab’s point, and it’s a pragmatic view.
If we all do opt to make the jump to the new, then frankly, whether or not SL continues is a moot point, again as Oz states (as did I in responding to comments on the Lab’s announcement last June / July). If the vast majority of us make the jump to the new, and SL is left as a largely empty environment we’re no longer interested in, then frankly, we won’t care if the lights stay on or off.
As to wanting us, as SL users, in the new – that’s a given. presenting a new VW environment to the world that can not only leverage new technologies, offer a cost-effective means of doing business or provide an educational platform and so on, and which already has a decent user community to demonstrate its attractiveness / usability, is the ideal outcome for the Lab. But that still doesn’t negate any of the above, and the Lab’s desire to continue to not just maintain, but to enhance and improve SL wherever and however they can.
And you’re right, there is a balancing act that is going on – and will continue to go on, both within the Lab and amongst users.
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So why would anyone else not be attracted to new, faster, bigger and better?
The truth is it has to make them more money than the last one. So even if every single SL person made the transition, it would have to be more expensive, or attract more people (which they haven’t been able to do in SL).
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“So even if every single SL person made the transition, it would have to be more expensive, or attract more people (which they haven’t been able to do in SL).”
I don’t entirely agree with the “more expensive” part of your observation. The advantage with building a new platform is that the revenue mechanisms could be more broadly spread, and positioned to better leverage opportunities not available to SL as a platform, potentially making the individual cost to the user somewhat lower than we face with SL.
However, I do agree with the second part; there’s a huge gamble in believing that a VW platform of the kind we currently know and enjoy can attract the kinds of numbers that have been mentioned. For a wide variety of reasons outside of this particular topic, I’m actually not entirely convinced that kind of market exists.
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I’ve yet to read this paper as I only picked up on it today, but the abstract clearly indicates that it is more complex than new, faster, bigger (better isn’t really useful as a concept – too subjective and different people will use different criteria.) http://bit.ly/1v5PwSu (link to Stanford document)
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Thanks for that – have bookmarked and will read!
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I think there is a good dose of realism in what’s being said by Oz. The digital world and gaming world is moving so fast that only a fool would predict where we will be in 5 years time; it makes sense to maintain what there is and develop for the future at the same time. If something new comes out of it (and if is the operative word), it will be quite different. It may be more ‘realistic’ – but what makes good creative work now? Style and feel, not just realism. That’s an intangible that I suspect they know is a slippery thing to guarantee. Faster and shinier may not win out.
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I think many people are missing a major point. The new world, whatever form it takes, will NOT be SL made over. There will be features that are SL-like and those that are not. Many people will prefer to remain in SL, in fact Ebbe has said “it will be many, many, many years before the new world will be acceptable to the majority of SL users” (paraphrased). I will not be surprised if SL is still alive and well 10 years from now.
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Yes.
It’s one of the reasons I steer away from calling it “SL 2”, or any variation thereof, because doing so tends to imply that whatever the new platform is, it will be more-or-less “SL” with new bells and whistles.
All we know for sure is that the new platform will be in the spirit of Second Life.
In other words, it will provide a means to foster creativity and provide opportunities for a wide range of experiences, be they for education, entertainment, business, whatever. It’ll have some form of micro-economy, and it will allow – where it is sensible to do so – users to carry forward certain aspects of their SL experience, such as identity, friends lists, the continued ability to use the same crypto-currency / tokens (L$), and for some content to be carried forward.
But how it will physically look and behave is almost anyone’s guess right now, and it will be a while before we really get to see and understand how it’ll work as an integrated platform.
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Linden World 2.0? LW2 for short 🙂
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Only if it comes with Primitar 2.0! 😀 .
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Call it what you like. LW2, LWII, LGP version 2 — unless Linden plans on attracting a whole new and different clientele, they are going to have to import a lot of SL ambience or it will crash due to the simple fact that there are a LOT more platforms out there than there were in 2007 and LL noveau will have to compete with every one of them.
It should be interesting. Linden Labs will make and the customers will dictate what they will or will not accept. T’was so when we traded chickens for spear points and will be true till we pass from the scene. Like I said, it should be interesting.
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Inara Pey you can try to defend your Linden buddies all you like. Fact is in about 4 months Altberg will need to show his miracle platform. He burned through enough money so investors will want to see where their money went. When first tests show it will not be what was expected Altberg will vanish and Linden Lab will “Focus their efforts on what they do best, namely the day to day maintenance of their flagship product Second Life” and that will be it.
I will be amazed if Linden their new platform is a success.
Everything went well in Second Life until the point Linden started to get greedy. This trashed the efforts made by the residents and brought the situation we see today. That and a lack of vision by Linden Lab to further develop Second Life in what it should have become.
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Bold predictions!
Would you like some sauce to go with the crow when the time comes? 🙂 .
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When you follow the game industry closely you will notice the relevance of my predictions.
Ow yes I see Kapor just pulled out. After seeing what Altberg is producing, you know “The miracle product” Kapor was so stunned by the possible millions and billions he was going to rake in ………….
Kapor said nah and cashed out.
Knock knock
– Who is there ?
It is mister
– Mister who ?
It is mister I told you so
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“Kapor said nah and cashed out.”
Allow me to draw your attention to the relevant part of the statement from Peter Gray about Mitch Kapor:
“he remains an investor in and supporter of Linden Lab…” (my emphasis, in case you missed it the first time around).
In other words, he hasn’t “cashed out”, he’s simply stepped back to devote more time to growing his Centre for Social Impact.
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I did read the article later, he has not cashed out completely yet.
Kapor sits in the board of 7 companies currently according to his website. Fact is if a company is going to bring out a new revolutionary product, the follow up that will become the next big thing in the VR boom hype. Why on earth would an entrepreneur step back just before launch?
While this is nothing crucial it is an indication.
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“I did read the article later.” – my emphasis, but enough said.
“While this is nothing crucial” – yes, it terms of LL’s future, you got that right.
“it is an indication” – that Mr. Kapor remains an investor in Linden Lab, and positioned to benefit so long as the company continues as a profitable business.
And really, that’s all there is to say on this matter, and as such, I’m calling time on the circular nature of this discourse.
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Even though I spend most of my time in OpenSim these days, I am still very fond of SL and wish the Lab all the best in their new creation. I think Opensim offers a really exciting prospect – an open source, interconnected web of independent virtual worlds connected to each other by hypergrid technology. A web of 3D worlds. Awesome potential. That said, Opensim would not exist if it weren’t for Second Life and Linden Lab. SL still brings many hours of joy to thousands of people and that is no small thing. I eagerly look forward to what the Lab and High Fidelity have in store. I am glad that there are smart people who are busy creating the future of virtual worlds.
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